Rhual is located to the north-west of Mold, on high ground above the south bank of the river Alun (nprn 36201). It is notable as a rare survival of an unaltered seventeenth-century forecourt layout, with walls and alcoves decorated with contemporary ornamental iron plates and tulips, and for the survival of a seventeenth-century bowling green. House and gardens lie within a small landscape park (700038). There are associations with the designer Stephen Switzer who may have been responsible for some early eighteenth-century landscaping. 

Gardens and grounds form the immediate surroundings of the house having developed in phases with the general layout dating from the later seventeenth century, and further changes made in the 1730s and during the nineteenth century. The forecourt is approached along a drive flanked by lawns set with ornamental trees and shrubs, from the south via an entrance through the brick boundary wall on the Mold-Gwernaffield road.  The forecourt is bounded by brick walls and is laid out on two levels. At the upper level are two grass rectangles surrounded by wide paths. The lower level widens to enclosed lawn with a central sundial and gravel walk around it. Also present are two corner pavilions and bee bole alcoves set into one wall, and a pedestal urn of 1735. Adjacent on the south is an area of lawn and, to its east, a lower level laid out as a parterre of box-edged rose beds. On its east side is a yew hedge with a narrow opening into a small enclosure bounded by similar hedges a high brick wall.

The general configuration of woodland and open ground around the gardens remains as it was in the late nineteenth century. Trails through The Grove, the former ‘Grove Walk’, have now gone though a monument dated 1788 inside the wood survives and may date the Walk. West of the house is an area of mixed woodland and dense undergrowth on top of a plateau. It incorprates a former (seventeenth-century) bowling green and skittle alley. A rhododendron-filled linear trench may once have been a canal. Also in the wood is a loop footpath lined with Wellingtonias, and a well-preserved ice house (405486).

Sources:

Cadw 1995: Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales, Clwyd, 220-3 (ref: PGW(C)45).

Ordnance Survey, Second-edition 25-inch map: Flintshire XIII.7 (1909).

RCAHMW, 16 February 2022